0.5.0 Behind the Scenes and 0.6.0 Preview

Hello, perverts! I hope that you're getting enough erotic outlet, with yourself or others, during a tricky time. I remain proud of myself for keeping up a pace with this project, although this week will probably be a little chill. Here are some of my recent thoughts:

Horror and Disfigurement

Recent releases have featured two different disfigured characters, Esther Shepherd and Castille. Horror has a nasty tendency to use ugly, disfigured, and disabled characters as monsters and objects, and I tried real hard to not do that with these characters.

It's a hard line to walk, because I do want to at least explore the dark and unsettling sides of different parts of life, and part of that is the fluidity of bodily integrity and identity. We live as beings that can be fucked, hurt, scarred, and shaped, and that's scary; but it's important to me that the fear comes from the essential vulnerability and mutability, and not from a dread of "turning into a monster" or the idea that disfigured people are other or less.

That's just some current thinking I have on it; I'll probably write about this again!

New Art

I'm real self-conscious about my drawing abilities. I know they're not terrible, but I also know they're not at the level of, say, a professional or semi-professional artist. At times, I've considered not having any sex scene art in my work, fearing that it would be more disruptive than hot. But in 0.5.0, I realized that the standard portrait art for Theresa just didn't read right when she was in bondage, so I could either hide it or draw new art.

While there are definitely problems I see with her new bondage art, it wasn't as scary or as hard as I was worried it would be. Also, I haven't seen a single word of criticism, which is probably due to how few people follow the game so far, but it's still nice. I intend to keep up with adding art when it's appropriate. Once I'm getting more patron feedback, I may end up going back and adding art to old scenes if that seems like something patrons want.

Next Release

I think I'm on track to do another Thursday release, but this changelog may seem a little small. That's because this one will include the Manual Sex training session, which is ending up pretty huge. The first scene is around 4600 words, which is almost as big as the entirety of the BDSM training sequence.

Part of the length is because this is the first time Theresa's having something most folks would agree is full-on sex with another person in the game, so I want it to feel important. Another part is that I'm doing a bit of education in the sequence, something I care about that I'll probably talk about in the next Behind the Scenes post.

The training sequence also needs new art. I've already finished one art set that isn't of a person, and I hope to also include a new pose set for Theresa. I think I can pull it off, as long as my stylus doesn't run out of batteries. It's at 30%, I don't have any AAAAs at home, and Amazon's delivery won't be here until Thursday. :)

So it's likely that 0.6.0 will include one new training sequence in Manual Sex, hopefully with two new art sets. It will also have a new patron-only feature: Reminiscing, which lets you replay old sex scenes that aren't repeatable in-character and try out different paths through them. I'm hoping that this will encourage more people to support the game. Beyond those two, I may add a new play option if I get the rest done early, but I'm not sure that will happen.

Let me know if you have any feedback! Stay safe, in bed and out.